Tahn (6 page)

She followed him with sudden anguish of heart. She wanted away from anywhere having to do with him more than she wanted anything else. Yet something about last night and now his words about children constrained her.
Oh, Lord!
she pleaded.
I want to run as far as I can! What should I do?

As they neared the outside world, Netta heard the thunder. Rain was pouring hard at the cave entrance.

“I am sorry that I have to take the horses, Lady,” he told her. “The youngest child is five, the rest not much more. I’ll need the animals to carry the little ones over the distance. Keep the shelter, at least till the storm breaks. I would that you wait for us, and I’ll give you your choice of the horses then. You may run out of food if there are problems to delay me. But I will bring more when I come. And here.” He handed her a knife. “You may need this. It should be three days, but if I am not back in a week, you may assume I’m dead.”

He bowed his head for a moment, and when he looked up at her again there was something deep and unsettling in his eyes. “Say a prayer for the children, Lady,” he begged her. “They surely need it.”

He gave a whistle, and Smoke met him at the flooded cave entrance. Soon they had vanished into the driving rain.

He rode hard in the storm, pushing himself and the horses. He knew he had no guarantee that his plan would work. It all depended on Samis believing his word. And Samis had never placed much trust in anyone.

Valhal stood on the side of a mountain, its high walls enclosing the home and training grounds of the self-dubbed dark angels and their savage mercenary leader. Unquestionably, Samis savored the notoriety of his men. He would send them out at the word of the baron or anyone else with wealth enough to pay them, to destroy and then return to their mountain retreat.

Valhal remained isolated. Most outsiders who knew of the place thought it was a cloistered monastery. Samis had designed it so. No one ever came but the rare merchant or young man fleeing life. And Samis could make good use of either.

Tahn approached boldly with his horses. He knew it would not be possible to smuggle out seven children, most of whom did not yet understand stealth. He would have to do it openly, which would require Samis’s permission, gained by deceit.

The sentryman yelled to him. “Dorn! You were not to return alone.”

“I must see Samis!” he shouted back. “It is urgent. In the performance of my duty I have been betrayed.”

Entering through the gate felt strange this time, as if he were somehow different. And he was. He was here as a lie; he was no longer part of this world.

Samis was waiting for him in the central sparring court. “Where is the Lady Trilett?” he demanded. He was old by the standards of the land, but his strength had not faded. He wore his black hair braided, and his confidence was such that he seldom wore his sword in the halls of Valhal. No one dared challenge him. Fear of the brutal consequences easily bested any detractor.

“I left the lady with Darin according to your orders, Lord,” Tahn said, beginning his carefully constructed tale. “When the rectory was ablaze, I returned to them swiftly, but they were gone. Would that you had seen it well to leave her with me.”

Samis’s eyes narrowed, and Tahn knew it was because he had dared question the wisdom of an order.

“I looked for them,” Tahn continued, “but lost the trail. It seemed clear to me that Darin wanted her for himself.

But I fear he may have hurt her and been unwilling to own to it.”

“Why do you think it?” Samis questioned, staring at him fiercely. Tahn met his eyes without hesitation.

“There was blood on the cottage floor, Lord.” He waited, giving Samis time to think that over.

“You think Darin would defy me?” Samis shook his head. “He has not the courage to face my wrath nor the cunning to betray me.”

Tahn freely acknowledged that. “Perhaps he will destroy himself,” he suggested. “When he has done what he will with the lady.”

“Where were they headed?” Samis asked.

“It seemed to be toward Tamask, Lord. I came to ask of you searchers. He has betrayed me as well as yourself. I wish to kill him when he is found.”

Samis smiled. “Ah, Tahn. You are pleasantly bloodthirsty. What would you do with the girl?”

“If anything remains of her, I shall strap her to my horse and bring her here to you. I fault her none in it. I left her sufficiently tied. You will do what you will.”

The older man nodded. “I will send you with the searchers you need. Rest yourself and your mount and be ready at first light.”

“My lord, I prefer that you not wait,” Tahn told him. “Send fresh men tonight ahead of me.”

Samis looked at him in question.

“I doubt they will find his trail, considering the rain,” Tahn told him. “There may be good fruit in searching the hills and the town nonetheless, but I have another plan.”

Samis seated himself again on his woven chair. He was intrigued. “What is it?”

“Allow me to take my students. There is no better time for a first assignment. They are street rats, Lord. They know how to be unseen ears. Darin was not provisioned. He shall have to stop somewhere for that, and I expect it to be in Tamask. They know the merchants and every hiding place in that city. They can be useful to me.”

Samis shook his head. “They have had too little training. There has not been time to build a loyalty. What is to keep them from slipping away from you themselves?”

“Fear, my lord,” Tahn answered him. “They cannot hide from me. And they know what shall happen if they try.”

“You remember well the hold of fear, then?”

“I do.”

“I would not have expected you to implement my teaching style so nearly.”

Tahn did not reply. So many times he had hoped there would one day be the opportunity to give this man the blade of his sword.

“You have a twofold purpose, then?” Samis was saying. “You wish to find Darin. But you also wish to give your students an active lesson they shall not forget?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And what if you lose some of them? You know you must kill them if they are too difficult.”

“It is a small loss,” Tahn told him carefully. “As you said, little training has been put into them so far. And there are street boys aplenty. However it goes, I shall return with the same number I parted with.” Terrible words, but Tahn knew they were the right ones.

“You are cruel.” Samis smiled.

“I had a good teacher.”

Tahn chose to leave before the night was through, allowing himself minimal rest. It was the sort of thing Samis would do, forcing the bewildered children out in the middle of the night, and Tahn knew it would please him. By the time he reached the children, they already knew that they were to be part of a search mission. The prospect frightened them, as did everything about this place. Only the youngest were sleeping when he lifted the bolt from their door.

“Wake your brothers,” he commanded.

“We go now, sir?” asked a freckle-faced boy with a scar across his cheek. He was seven-year-old Doogan.

“Yes,” Tahn told them as strictly as he could manage. “There will be no crying nor lagging behind. And you know the punishment for trying to run.”

More than one of the boys looked anxiously at Tahn’s sword. But only one child dared sniffle, the only girl among them, a tiny thing named Temas, also seven. She was dressed like the boys, her hair cropped short.

The two sleeping ones were roused, and the children were forming a line. But little Duncan, barely five, was stumbling on his feet.

“I fear he’s not prepared for this, sir,” the biggest boy said. His name was Stuva, and he was nine.

Tahn turned to look at him. The pleading in the boy’s face made him want to pound the walls in anguish. But he betrayed no feeling at all. “You’ll have to help him,” he said.

Stuva jumped to put his arms around the younger boy, clearly relieved for the permission. They were brothers, and Stuva was always watchful for the little one.

“Carry your discipline proudly as we go,” Tahn commanded the children. Eyes would be watching this unique departure, and Samis could yet call it off. Tahn could not tell the children his intentions. They must be clearly frightened to be leaving Valhal this night, not excited.

The young warrior and his ragged ensemble made their way toward the central gate.

“The Dorn’s little soldiers,” someone snickered.

Four young men were standing near the wall, sharing a vial of the powerful opiate so common to Valhal. “Think you can handle the brats by yourself?” one of them taunted.

“This many and the four of you as well,” Tahn replied. They were teenagers but ruined already. It plagued him. He would have liked to take with him some of the bigger boys, especially thirteen-year-old Vari, who had never fit in. But the young men had already received so much of Samis’s poison in their minds that Tahn couldn’t trust them. And he had no authority over them anyway.

Samis was waiting at the gate. “You will be back in a week as we said?”

“Indeed.”

In full sight of the children, Samis handed Tahn a whip. “You will know when to use this,” he said.

It was not easy for Tahn to maintain his steel. But he could not fail. So he nodded. “Crybabies and shirkers,” he said and affixed the cruel thing to his belt. Perhaps this was what he should afflict Samis with one day.

The children’s fright was tangible. They stood all in a line, their wide eyes watching the teacher and his master.

Samis was supplying two more horses. Tahn had not known to expect that, and didn’t know that he would keep the animals long. The extra horses would help them, surely, with the distance, but he wanted somehow to make their trail difficult to follow.

He tied a long line between each horse, with Smoke in the lead. And then he assigned places, Stuva and Duncan in the back, Tam and Briant, and then Doogan and Rane directly behind him. He would share his saddle with Temas.

Samis watched them leave. The tall man beside him shook his head. “Do you think they will do any good, my lord?”

“We shall see what they will do.” Samis turned to the group of men at his right and called two of them by name. “Follow them,” he ordered. “Make sure they are going to Tamask.”

Then he turned from the gate toward his own chamber again, and the waiting bottle of wine.